I was a smoker. There was a time in my life when I felt enormously bored every time I do not have a lit cigarette between my fingers. While it is true that the momentarily relief smoking offers can be quite addictive, still when it comes down to the health risks it accompanies, there is no way to justify this habit.

Quitting is no easy task once one has been exposed to this bad habit for an extended period of time. Withdrawal symptoms are terrible. The mouth salivates, mentally one feels as if something is missing, as if there is a craving or hunger, that has not been satisfied and the longer nicotine is absent it sometimes causes the smoker to become on edge, easily annoyed and irritable.

Lucky for me quitting was not a problem, I do not know how or why but somehow my body tells me to stop. Each day the need or craving for a fag becomes less and less till one day I just stop, as if nothing happened and I just go back to being cigarette-free.

However, for my brother, who is 27 and unemployed, smoking has taken an unusual hold on him that he just have to have a puff, or his whole world crumbles. Speaking and or interacting with him when he has not had a smoke for an extended period becomes difficult, because he is irritable and behaves so annoyingly lethargic.

While I understand that it is difficult - the symptoms he is suffering from  - what I fail to grasp is his immaturity. I have been where he is, where I felt I needed a smoke very badly but I did not have a penny in my pocket, so I had to substitute my craving with coffee until it subsides, Because I tell myself that smoking is a vice, and usually it entails money in order to maintain it. Therefore one must have a job in order to satisfy one's vice(s).

Sadly though my brother's immaturity prevents him from understanding this, and now at the age of 27 years old, he still thinks we are responsible for him because he is the youngest. I do hope he snaps out of it. I hope he comes to realize the time and opportunity he is wasting, staying at home, being a freeloader, before it becomes too late.